Propaganda from Media

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh calls Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and actress Halle Berry “Halfrican Americans.” According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh, discussing Obama’s nascent presidential candidacy, says, “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry.” Limbaugh then says, “‘As a Halfrican American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry’s support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans,’ Obama said.” Limbaugh later concedes that Obama “didn’t say it.” Limbaugh tells his audience that Obama “is the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya.” [Media Matters, 1/24/2007]

Rock musician Ted Nugent, brandishing an assault rifle on stage in this undated photo. It is not clear whether the rifle is real. [Source: NIN (.com)]During a concert, rock musician Ted Nugent brandishes what appears to be an assault rifle on stage and makes crude and profane comments about Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY), the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Invitations to 'Suck on My Machine Gun' - In a video clip of the incident, Nugent waves the rifle around and shouts: “I was in Chicago. I said, ‘Hey, Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!’ Obama, he’s a piece of sh_t. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let’s hear it for it. And I was in New York. I said, ‘Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless b_tch!” He also invites Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to “suck on my machine gun” and calls Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) a “worthless wh_re.” Nugent, an enthusiastic Republican, has been a member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors since 1995, and has frequently issued crude and profane criticisms of Democratic candidates and policies. Fox Host Refuses to Criticize Nugent, Instead Attacks Obama - Three days later, Fox News host Sean Hannity airs a clip of the incident on his show, and, calling Nugent a “friend and frequent guest on the program,” refuses to criticize his statements. Hannity shows the clip, then says: “That was friend and frequent guest on the program Ted Nugent expressing his feelings towards Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Joining us now, Democratic strategist Bob Beckel and Republican strategist Karen Hanretty.” Hannity asks Beckel why liberals might be upset at Nugent’s rhetoric but, he says, “I don’t hear anybody criticizing Barack Obama for accusing our troops of killing civilians, air-raiding villages, et cetera, et cetera. What’s more shocking to you? What’s more offensive to you? Is it Barack Obama’s statement about our troops or Ted Nugent?” (Hannity is referring to a recent allegation he made that Obama was lying about US troops killing Afghan civilians; Hannity’s allegation was itself false—see August 21, 2007). Beckel responds: “You know, only you could figure out a way to ask a question like that. First of all, Nugent, this is a boy who’s missing a couple dogs from under his front porch. This guy has been pimping for Republicans for years now. They want him to run for Senate against Obama. I can’t believe—when the Dixie Chicks said something about George Bush, which was mild compared to this jerk, and the religious right, the Dobsons and the Robertsons, rose up in fury. You rose up in fury.” (Beckel is referring to complaints from Hannity and other conservatives that followed comments by the lead singer of the country group the Dixie Chicks that criticized President Bush—see March 10, 2003 and After.) Hannity says: “You know, typical Bob Beckel. But you can’t answer the question. I didn’t ask you that.” After a brief period of crosstalk, Beckel asks, “Are you prepared now, Sean—are you prepared to disavow this lowlife or not?” Hannity refuses, saying: “No, I like Ted Nugent. He’s a friend of mine.… [H]e’s a rock star. Yes, here’s my point. If you don’t like it, don’t go to the concert, don’t buy his new albums.” Instead, Hannity asks if Beckel’s “liberal brain can absorb” his question about Obama’s supposed lies regarding Afghanistan, and Beckel responds: “The question is not even a close call. I think Nugent was far over the line and Obama was not.… This Nugent is more offensive. This guy ought to be knocked off the air. He ought to never come on your show again, and if you have him on, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. He’s a bum!” Hannity Has Criticized 'Hate Speech' Directed at Conservatives - Hannity apparently has different standards for different people. He has accused Clinton of indulging in “hate speech” when she talked about the existence of what she called a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In March, he devoted an entire segment to a “list of the worst examples of liberal hate speech.” [National Ledger, 8/24/2007; Media Matters, 8/27/2007]

At least one supporter of far-right libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) argues that a recently published article in the New Republic that exposed the overtly racist and conspiratorial content in Paul’s newsletters (see 1978-1996) was the result of a conspiracy by “beltway libertarians” from the Cato Institute to discredit Paul. According to Thomas DiLorenzo, the Koch family (see 1979-1980), who provide much of the funding for the Cato Institute (see 1977-Present and 1981-2010), is behind the conspiracy. “Proof” of this conspiracy, according to DiLorenzo, is that James Kirchick, the author of the article, has said he found many of the newsletters in the University of Kansas library; Charles Koch “is a major patron” of that university. DiLorenzo asks, “How on earth would a kid just out of college know to go to a library in Kansas, of all places, to dig up such stuff?” DiLorenzo goes on to say that he “recognized a paragraph [in Kirchick’s article] that was identical to one written on several occassions by one of the especially hate-filled Beltway losers who works at a DC ‘think tank’ on his spleen-venting personal blog. Either he wrote it or coached the author.” Author David Bernstein, who notes that the Cato Institute is preparing to publish a book of his, speculates that Kirchick may have used an Internet database called Wordcat to find the Paul newsletters, and writes, “Even ‘kids just out of college’ often know how to use the Internet, I believe.” And Kirchick calls DiLorenzo’s conspiracy theorizing “comically credulous.” [New Republic, 1/8/2008; Thomas DiLorenzo, 1/12/2008; David Bernstein, 1/12/2008; New Republic, 1/15/2008] DiLorenzo publishes his theory on the blog of former Paul chief of staff Lew Rockwell, who runs the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama closely allied with Paul. [Thomas DiLorenzo, 1/12/2008] A week after the publication of the first New Republic article, Paul will deny having virtually any involvement with his newsletters (see January 16, 2008).

Reporters show that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a leading Democratic presidential candidate, was never educated in a “madrassa,” or Islamic school, as some of his political enemies claim. Insight Magazine, a subsidiary of the conservative Washington Times, recently reported that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had unearthed information showing that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa during his childhood. The Clinton campaign disputes that it is the source of the story, and calls it “an obvious right-wing hit job.” Obama indeed lived in Indonesia from 1967 through 1971, with his mother and stepfather, but was not educated in a madrassa. Instead, Obama, who was six when his family moved to Indonesia, attended the Basuki School from 1969 through 1971. According to a school official: “This is a public school. We don’t focus on religion.” CNN correspondent John Vause, who visited the school, reports: “I came here to Barack Obama’s elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa… like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.… I’ve been to those madrassas in Pakistan… this school is nothing like that.” A former classmate of Obama’s says the school was not radical in 1969: “It’s not [an] Islamic school. It’s general.… There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian.… So that’s a mixed school.” Associated Press reporters also visit two other schools attended by Obama, the SDN Menteng 1 and Fransiskus Assisi. SDN Menteng 1 is a secular public school, according to its vice principal, while Fransiskus Assisi is, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, “clearly a Catholic school.” After the Insight story is repeated on Fox News, the Obama campaign calls those broadcasts “appallingly irresponsible.” [CNN, 1/22/2008; Associated Press, 1/24/2008] Despite the debunking, some conservative radio hosts continue to assert that Obama is a Muslim (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, April 3, 2008, July 10, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, August 21, 2008, and September 10, 2008).

Michael Savage. [Source: Portland Indymedia]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic presidential primary race, now between African-American Barack Obama and female Hillary Clinton, “the first affirmative-action election in American history.” Savage says: “We have a woman and a multi-ethnic man running for office on the Democrat side. Is this not akin to an affirmative action election? Isn’t that why the libs are hysterical, tripping over themselves to say amen and yes to this affirmative election vote?” Because Americans do not support affirmative action, Savage asserts, voters will reject either Democratic candidate in the November presidential elections. “When they are heard from, the affirmative action ticket goes down in flames… I don’t really care who’s gonna be on the other side, they win. America’s not ready for an affirmative action presidency. I stand by those words.” Savage goes on to characterize Democratic supporters as “radical red-diaper doper babies from Brooklyn who made a fortune in the film business by urinating on the American flag and decimating the American value, the values that you grew up loving. They [are t]he ones who made a fortune hating America.” [Media Matters, 2/4/2008]

The logo for Citizens United Not Timid, with a graphic illustration representative of female anatomy. [Source: Media Matters]Republican strategist Roger Stone, the founder of a 527 group called “Citizens United Not Timid,” appears on MSNBC’s Tucker, a talk show hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Stone’s organization was founded to oppose the presidential candidacy of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and purports to “educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is.” What Clinton “really is,” the organization emphasizes, is the obscenity spelled out by the group’s acronym. The group emphasizes the acronym on its Web site and on T-shirts by showing the first letters of the words in its name in boldface. Stone has appeared on Carlson’s show numerous times in recent weeks. This appearance is notable because NBC, MSNBC’s parent company, recently issued an apology for Jane Fonda’s use of the word “c_nt” on a recent Today Show appearance, when Fonda was discussing the play The Vagina Monologues. Carlson does not inform his audience of Stone’s leadership of the anti-Clinton organization. Stone has said of the organization: “[I]t’s one-word education. That’s our mission. No issues. No policy groups. No position papers. This is a simple committee with an unfortunate acronym.” Stone has said that he and a group of co-founders tried to brainstorm a name for the acronym “b_tch,” but “just couldn’t do it.” In recent days, MSNBC host Chris Matthews apologized for making sexist comments about Clinton, and MSNBC correspondent David Shuster was suspended for making objectionable comments about Clinton and her daughter Chelsea. The liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters writes, “The events of the past few weeks are part of an extensive pattern, documented by Media Matters for America, of sexism, misogyny, and other bigotry heard on MSNBC.” [Media Matters, 2/20/2008] In August 2007, Stone was forced to leave the campaign of New York State Senator Joseph Bruno (R-NY) after he left a threatening, abusive, and profane telephone message for the 83-year-old father of Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY). [New York Times, 8/22/2007]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, syndicated conservative radio host Michael Savage, continuing the well-debunked assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008), says that American voters “have a right to know if he’s a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings.” The media should not worry about Republican candidate John McCain’s connections to lobbyists, Savage says, and instead should be more concerned with “the Muslim connection to Obama.” Savage says: “Barack Hussein Obama. Father Muslim, grandfather Muslim. Nothing wrong with that. But we, the American people, being at war with radical Islam have a—have a need to know just exactly what kind of Muslim he was exposed to, what kind of Muslim he is, what kind of Muslim teachings he’s—he’s friendly to. We have a right to know if he’s a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings.” [Media Matters, 2/22/2008]

Senator Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Somalia. [Source: Associated Press]Conservative radio hosts such as Dan Caplis and “Gunny” Bob Newman use a photo of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing traditional Kenyan robes to imply that Obama has terrorist sympathies. As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Caplis says the photo shows Obama wearing “the same type of turban and clothing that Osama bin Laden wears,” while Newman asks, “[W]hy do you think Obama really had the photo taken, dressed up as a Somali warlord?” The photo was taken during an August 2006 visit by Obama to Kenya, where his father was born. [Media Matters, 2/25/2008] It was published a few days ago by the conservative Drudge Report. According to Yusuf Garaad Omar, head of the BBC’s Somali Service, the robes are “the normal clothes that nomadic people wear. The head turban is especially used by elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning whatsoever in Somalia culture. If you see someone dressed like that in Somalia, you think it is a nomadic person—that is all. There is no religious significance to it whatsoever. It is mainly the nomadic people who use it. Some of them are religious, some are not. It is simply a tradition of the place where they are from. In this particular place, Wajir in north-east Kenya, the community is majority ethnic Somali.… This debate reminds me of people back home in Somalia, who say that women should not wear trousers, or other cultures who say men should not wear a tie. I just don’t think it makes sense.” [BBC, 2/26/2008] Caplis asks his listeners why Obama would “put on similar clothing to the outfit worn by the man who personally ordered thousands of Americans, including women and kids, to be burned to death,” and says that “it would be as if [former President] John Kennedy had gone out and thrown on the fatigues and the funny baseball hat that Castro wore.” Newman, like Caplis a nationally syndicated Clear Channel talk show host, tells his audience, according to Media Matters: “We were five years into the war on terror when Obama knowingly and willingly dressed up in Somali warlord garb to have his photo taken.” He asks if Obama wore the robes “to garner support from Muslim-Americans who ideologically support Muslim terrorists?” and then asks, “Would it have been right for [former President] Harry Truman to dress up like a Nazi in 1948?” Caplis also tells his audience, “[Obama’s] middle name is Hussein, which should not be held against him for a second; his last name rhymes with Osama, which should not be held against him for a second.” [Media Matters, 2/25/2008] Months later, Newman will tell his listeners that an Obama presidency will welcome “an invasion of Muslim terrorists” (see July 10, 2008).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage says of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, “I think he was hand-picked by some very powerful forces both within and outside the United State of America to drag this country into a hell that it has not seen since the Civil War of the middle of the 19th century.” Savage is referring to controversial statements made by Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom Savage calls “the soul of Barack Obama’s movement.” Savage goes on to claim that Wright, and by extension Obama, align themselves with historical enemies of the United States: “And if you want a man who says not ‘God bless America,’ but ‘God d_mn America,’ if you want a man who takes the side of the imperial Japanese army, an army that killed not only hundreds of thousands in the Bataan Death March, but hundreds of thousand of Koreans, an army that operated on people while they were alive in Manchuria, a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Japanese Nazis of World War II, if you want a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Hitlers of the world, then you’ve got it in Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ.” Obama is merely “an ordinary apparatchik of the Democrat machine in Chicago” whose handlers intend to use Obama to bring upheaval and chaos to the nation. [Media Matters, 3/19/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage repeats the false assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, a trope repeated by many conservative radio hosts (see January 22-24, 2008). In reality, Obama is a practicing Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ. The allegations that Obama is, or ever was, a Muslim have been debunked by, among others, CNN, the Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press. Savage again lies to his listeners by telling them another oft-repeated falsehood, that Obama was educated in a radical Islamist “madrassah” during a childhood stint in Indonesia. Savage tells his listeners: “Look who we inherited in this country, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Hussein Obama, in one generation. A war hero to—a war hero who commanded the Allied operations against Nazi Germany was running for the presidency then. Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim.… Yes, check it out.” [Media Matters, 4/7/2008] Weeks before, Savage told his listeners that Obama and his former pastor supported the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and Obama would bring chaos and devastation to the United States on a scale not seen since the Civil War (see March 13, 2008).

Author and former civil litigator Glenn Greenwald writes that he is angered, but not particularly shocked, at the US mainstream media’s failure to provide in-depth, extensive coverage of the recently released 2003 torture memo (see March 14, 2003 and April 1, 2008) and another memo asserting that the Bush administration had declared the Fourth Amendment null and void in reference to “domestic military operations” inside the US (see April 2, 2008). Greenwald also notes the lack of coverage of a recent puzzling comment by Attorney General Michael Mukasey about 9/11 (see March 27, 2008). Instead, Greenwald notes, stories about the Democratic presidential campaign (including criticism over Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s recent bowling scores) have dominated press coverage. According to a recent NEXIS search, these various topics have been mentioned in the media in the last thirty days: “Yoo and torture” (referring to John Yoo, the author of the two memos mentioned above)—102. “Mukasey and 9/11”—73. “Yoo and Fourth Amendment”—16. “Obama and bowling”—1,043. “Obama and Wright”—More than 3,000 (too many to be counted). “Obama and patriotism”—1,607. “Clinton and Lewinsky”—1,079. [Salon, 4/5/2008](For the record, on March 30, Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania during a campaign stop, in the company of Senator Bob Casey (D-PA). Newsmax is among the many media outlets that provided play-by-play coverage of Obama’s abysmal performance on the lanes—he scored a 37. The site reported that Obama lost “beautifully” and was “way out of his league.”) [NewsMax, 3/31/2008]Media Attacks Obama's 'Elitism' - The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz gives over much of his column to a discussion of Obama’s eating and bowling habits, making the argument, according to Greenwald, that Obama is “not a regular guy but an arrogant elitist.” Kurtz defends his argument by compiling a raft of “similar chatter about this from Karl Rove” and others. Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson spent a week’s worth of columns calling Obama’s bowling his biggest mistake, a “real doozy.” MSNBC reported that Obama went bowling “with disastrous consequences.” Greenwald notes that the media “as always,” takes “their personality-based fixations from the right, who have been promoting the Obama is an arrogant, exotic, elitist freak narrative for some time.” In this vein, Time’s Joe Klein wrote of what he called Obama’s “patriotism problem,” saying that “this is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right.” Greenwald notes, “He trotted it all out—the bowling, the lapel pin, Obama’s angry, America-hating wife, ‘his Islamic-sounding name.’” Greenwald calls the media fixation on Obama’s bowling and his apparent failure to be a “regular guy” another instance of their “self-referential narcissism—whatever they sputter about is what ‘the people’ care about, and therefore they must keep harping on it, because their chatter is proof of its importance. They don’t need Drudge to rule their world any longer because they are Matt Drudge now.” [Salon, 4/5/2008]

Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama. [Source: Boston Globe]Two of the three major presidential candidates speak out against the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign to manipulate public opinion about Iraq (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). Clinton - Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) says the program raises questions of “credibility and trust at the Pentagon,” and calls for an investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general. The Clinton campaign says that, considering the Bush administration’s record on intelligence and misinformation, an investigation of the operation is necessary to determine how the Pentagon manipulated the “commentary of putatively independent television military analysts” for “‘selling’ the Iraq war and our country’s defense policy now.” The campaign also says that “serious questions” have been raised “about the potential linkage of government contracts to favorable public commentary by military analysts.” Obama - Democratic Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) says he is “deeply disturbed” that the administration “sought to manipulate the public’s trust,” and says the program “deserves further investigation to determine if laws or ethical standards were violated.” The Obama campaign calls for “greater transparency to ensure that those who lobby the Pentagon are not rewarded for favorable commentary about the administration’s policies.” McCain - Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has as yet said nothing about the program. [Nation, 4/28/2008]

In response to a Supreme Court decision allowing states to require photo ID for voting, Fox News states as fact the theory that photo ID requirements would have prevented a case of voter registration fraud in Washington State, in which seven ACORN workers were convicted. Fox News writes, “But if photo ID requirements had been the law in Washington State, the voter fraud scandal involving ACORN in 2006 would never have happened.” [Fox News, 5/2/2008] The report continues: “According to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, the incident ‘was the worst case of election fraud in our state’s history. It was an outrage’.” Reed is both misquoted and quoted out of context. He was not referring to photo ID. The Seattle Times version of the same quote reads: “‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington. There has been nothing comparable to this,’ state Secretary of State Sam Reed said at a news conference.” [Seattle Times, 7/6/2007; Fox News, 5/2/2008]

’Gunny’ Bob Newman. [Source: Newsradio 850 KOA]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host “Gunny” Bob Newman, the host of a popular Denver talk show, responds to a Tennessee Republican Party ad attacking presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s wife Michelle to accuse Obama of behaving like a stereotypical black street hood. Calling Obama a “clown” and asking if he is “some sort of a bad _ss,” Newman then addresses Obama directly, demanding: “What are you gonna do, Obama, come to Denver and try, key word try, to whip my white _ss? Son, you are not some sort of macho tough guy, trust me. You are just another blowhard, make-believe thug who wants to be the most powerful man on Earth. You’re a far-left, terrorist-hugging politician, not the bad-boy gangsta you want people to believe you are.” Obama called Republican attacks on his wife “unacceptable” and “detestable,” apparently provoking Newman’s response. [Media Matters, 5/20/2008] In previous broadcasts, Newman accused Obama of dressing like a terrorist sympathizer (see February 25, 2008).

Mark Levin. [Source: 640 WHLO-AM]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin tells his listeners that presidential candidate Barack Obama “lied to” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when he “told them today that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards should be designated a terrorist group after voting against a bill designating them a terrorist group a year ago.” Fox News anchor Martha McCallum echoes the accusation a day later on her show The Live Desk, saying that Obama “seems to be changing his tune on the significant issue.” Both Levin and McCallum are misrepresenting Obama’s voting record. He has consistently voted to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, and co-sponsored a November 2007 bill to do just that. Levin and McCallum are referencing a 2007 bill that Obama says he would have voted against, a bill that, Obama said, “states that our military presence in Iraq should be used to counter Iran.” Obama disagreed with that portion of the resolution, not another section that advocated for the designation of the Guards as a terrorist organization. The false characterization of Obama’s stance on the Guards may originate with Obama’s opponent John McCain, who says just before Levin’s broadcast that Obama “was categorical in his statement when he opposed that legislation. Then he goes before AIPAC and supports it. I know he’s changing on the surge, he’s trying to change on his pledge to negotiate with dictators without preconditions.” Levin flatly calls Obama “a liar… he’s a radical extremist and he’s a liar.” [Media Matters, 6/6/2008]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage repeatedly refers to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as an “Afro-Leninist.” As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage asserts: “If the other side [the Republican Party] had one decent candidate, one real conservative, he would win 70-30. But because we have a retread, a Bush III [referring to Republican candidate John McCain], it’s going to be very doubtful as to whether or not we can avoid outright Marxism and Afro-Leninism running this country.” Later in the broadcast, he calls Obama “[a]n Afro-Leninist who’s achieved nothing” and “the most narcissistic candidate in the history of the presidency.” [Media Matters, 6/10/2008]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas has endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama. A Hamas spokesman had made positive comments about Obama in April, but after Obama stated his support for Israel against Hamas and other Islamist terror organizations, a Hamas spokesman stated that his organization “does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and [Republican John] McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win.” As reported by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh says: “I will guaran-damn-tee you there will not be a terrorist attack before the election. And you know why there won’t be one? Because they want Obama elected.… Hamas has endorsed Obama. Hamas has endorsed Obama. Do you think they’re going to do anything to upset the apple cart of Obama’s election? Why do you think they’ve endorsed Obama? Because they want a very strong ally for Israel in the White House?” Limbaugh expands his rhetoric to equate Democrats with Islamic terrorists: “[E]very time I hear [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad speak, every time I hear a tape from [al-Qaeda leader] Ayman al Zawahiri or a so-called dispatch from [Osama] bin Laden, whenever I hear from any of these Middle East al-Qaeda terrorists, I think I’m hearing Democrat [sic] Party talking points.… Am I politically incorrect for saying this? We all know it to be true.” Limbaugh has previously asserted that “Islamofascists are actively campaigning for the election of Democrats.” [Reuters, 6/4/2008; Media Matters, 6/24/2008]

A 2003 publicity photo of Monica Crowley. [Source: 96.9 FM WTKK]Fox News commentator Monica Crowley, guest-hosting conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show, tells her audience that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is not African-American, but “Arab African.” Crowley admits that she has done no research to verify her claim, but is quoting conservative blogger Kenneth Lamb, who himself provided no verification to his February 2008 claim. Crowley says: “[A]ccording to this genealogy—and again, because I haven’t done the research, I can’t verify this—but according to this guy Kenneth Lamb, Barack Obama is not black African, he is Arab African.… And yet, this guy is campaigning as black and painting anybody who dares to criticize him as a racist. I mean, that is—it is the biggest con I think I’ve ever seen.” (Lamb has consistently refused to provide the research to back his claim, but has instead challenged critics to do the research themselves—including surreptitiously obtaining samples of Obama’s DNA for testing—and accused the administration of Harvard University of complicity in perpetuating the “sleight of hand.”) [Media Matters, 6/26/2008] In September 2008, radio host Rush Limbaugh will repeat the falsehood (see September 22, 2008).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host “Gunny” Bob Newman, the host of a popular Denver talk show, says that if Barack Obama (D-IL) is elected president, the US will be overrun by Muslim terrorists. If Obama is elected, Newman tells his audience, “we better start learning Arabic.… There will be a lot more Arabic speakers here in our country if he [is], because there will be an invasion of Muslim terrorists if he becomes president.” Under an Obama presidency, Newman says, “the first sentence… American kids would have to learn is ‘please don’t cut my head off.’” [Media Matters, 7/11/2008] Newman continues the right-wing assertion that Obama is a Muslim, an assertion long since proven false (see January 22-24, 2008).

Attempting to explain the psyche of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to his listeners, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says that Obama “is not a great thinker” but rather a “believer” who has been “indoctrinated at his schools” to believe “that the United States is at root responsible for the way we are treated and seen by those who hate us.” Limbaugh may be referring to false rumors that Obama was educated in Islamic madrassas (see January 22-24, 2008 and September 10, 2008). As reported by the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh explains: “It’s a form of self-loathing, ladies and gentlemen—not of himself, of course, ‘cause he’s the messiah—but in the aggregate self-loathing of nation, the kind of self-loathing of America that the left here and in Europe embraces. And that’s why they love Obama—because he loathes America. He blames America. America’s responsible for all that’s wrong in the world.” [Media Matters, 7/22/2008; National Journal, 7/26/2008]

Cover of ‘The Obama Nation’ [Source: Threshold / FactCheck (.org)]Dr. Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and blogger who was deeply involved in the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to besmirch presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA), publishes a book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The title is a play on the word ‘abomination.’ In his book, Corsi, who writes for the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily and blogs at the extremist Free Republic, attacks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a fashion similar to that used against Kerry—combining fact, hyperbole, speculation, and outright falsehoods in an attempt to demean and disparage Obama’s character and professional career. The publisher, Threshold (a division of Simon and Schuster devoted to publishing conservative political works), calls the book “[s]crupolously sourced” and “[m]eticulously researched and documented…” Among other allegations, Corsi accuses Obama of growing up under the influence of Communist, socialist, and radical Islamic mentors; of deep and secretive affiliations with ‘60s radicals William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn; of espousing what he calls “black liberation theology” through his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright; connections to socialists and radical Islamists in Kenya, his father’s home country; deep and criminal ties to Chicago real-estate mogul Tony Rezko; and an intent to, if elected president, implement what Corsi calls “far-left” domestic and foreign policies. [Simon and Schuster, 8/1/2008; New York Times, 8/12/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] The book debuts as number one on the New York Times bestseller list, propelled by large bulk sales (large buys by particular organizations designed to artificially elevate sales figures) and an intensive marketing campaign carried out on conservative talk radio shows. “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Corsi says. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.” [New York Times, 8/12/2008]Allegations Roundly Debunked - Unfortunately for Corsi, his allegations do not stand up to scrutiny. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan “‘consumer advocate’ for voters” site run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, finds that Corsi’s book “is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.” It “is not a reliable source of facts about Obama.” FactCheck notes: “Corsi cites opinion columns and unsourced, anonymous blogs as if they were evidence of factual claims. Where he does cite legitimate news sources, he frequently distorts the facts. In some cases, Corsi simply ignores readily accessible information when it conflicts with his arguments.” The organization notes that Threshold’s chief editor, Republican operative Mary Matalin, said the book was not political, but rather “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.” FactCheck responds: “The prominent display of Corsi’s academic title (he holds a Ph.D. in political science) seems clearly calculated to convey academic rigor. But as a scholarly work, The Obama Nation does not measure up. We judge it to be what a hack journalist might call a ‘paste-up job,’ gluing together snippets from here and there without much regard for their truthfulness or accuracy.” [FactCheck (.org), 2008; FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] The St. Petersburg Times’s PolitiFact finds, “Taken as a whole, the book’s primary argument is that Obama is a likely communist sympathizer with ties to Islam who has skillfully hidden his true agenda as he ruthlessly pursues elected office,” an argument that the organization concludes is wholly unsupported by Corsi’s arguments and sources. [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008] And an Associated Press article finds the book a “collect[ion of] false rumors and distortions [designed] to portray Obama as a sort of secret radical who can’t be trusted.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008]Unreliable Sources - As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Corsi’s sources are often unreliable: for example, his allegation that Obama’s father divorced his mother according to “Islamic sharia law” is based on a single and unverifiable post made by an anonymous blogger. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes that although Corsi points to his over 600 endnotes as proof of his “rigorous” sourcing, many of those endnotes refer to obscure, unverifiable Internet postings, blog posts, and opinion columns. Four of Corsi’s sources refer to his own work. “Where Corsi does cite news sources,” the site says, “he sometimes presents only those that are consistent with his case while ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit the picture he paints.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Demonstrably False Claims - Some of Corsi’s claims are completely false: his statement that Obama did not dedicate his 2004 memoir, Dreams from My Father, to his parents or grandparents is easily debunked merely by reading the book’s introduction, in which Obama wrote, “It is to my family, though—my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents—that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book.” [Media Matters, 8/4/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] Corsi also claims, falsely, that Obama holds dual citizenship in the US and Kenya, though the Kenyan Constitution specifically prohibits dual citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] Corsi goes on to claim that Obama has long rejected his white family members from his mother’s side, including his grandparents in Hawaii who raised him for much of his childhood. This is part of Corsi’s argument about Obama’s secret embrace of the so-called “radical black rage” teachings of American activist Malcolm X. According to Corsi’s reading of Obama’s memoir: “His race, he self-determines, is African-American. In making that determination, he rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents. We do not have to speculate about this. Obama tells this to us outright; his words are direct, defying us to miss his meaning.” But PolitiFact calls this “a significant misreading of Obama’s memoir,” and notes that Corsi ignores a large amount of evidence that points to Obama’s continued close relationship with his white family members throughout his life. PolitiFact concludes, “To conclude that Obama rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents, Corsi has to significantly read against the memoir’s stated meaning. We find factual evidence also contradicts this statement, indicating that Obama maintained lifelong relations with his white relatives.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008]Insinuations and Leading Questions - Many of Corsi’s allegations are based on little more than questions and insinuations: for example, Corsi insinuates that Obama may not have stopped using marijuana and cocaine, as he admitted to doing during his high school years. Corsi writes: “Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended into his law school days or beyond. Did Obama ever use drugs in his days as a community organizer in Chicago, or when he was a state senator from Illinois? How about in the US Senate? If Obama quit using drugs, the public inquiry certain to occur in a general election campaign for the presidency will most certainly aim at the when, how and why…?” According to Media Matters, Obama wrote in his book Dreams from My Father that he stopped using drugs shortly after beginning college. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes: “Corsi… slyly insinuates—without offering any evidence—that Obama might have ‘dealt drugs’ in addition to using them. And he falsely claims that Obama has ‘yet to answer’ whether he continued using drugs during his law school days or afterward.… In fact, Obama has answered that question twice, including once in the autobiography that Corsi reviews in his book.” Guilt by Association - Corsi alleges that Obama has links to Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga, and claims that Obama is somehow linked to the violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. He bases his claim on a single visit by Obama and his wife, Michelle, to Kenya, where they publicly took AIDS tests to demonstrate the tests’ safety. In the testing process, Obama spoke briefly to the crowd. Odinga was on stage while Obama spoke. Corsi construes the speech as an Obama endorsement of Odinga, and, as FactCheck writes, “[h]e goes on to attribute all the violence in Kenya to an elaborate Odinga plot.” Corsi ignores the fact that during that trip, Obama also met with the other Kenyan presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, and with opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta. Human Rights Watch blamed the violence following the election on both Odinga and Kibaki and their followers. FactCheck notes that Corsi uses the logical fallacy of “guilt by association” to fill Chapters 3 through 7. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Misquoting Other Sources - Media Matters finds that Corsi sometimes misquotes and rewrites source material, as when he attributed a claim concerning Obama’s supposedly untoward business relationship with Rezko to articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, and Salon (.com) that made none of the claims Corsi attributes to them. Corsi also misquoted the conservative Web site NewsMax when he used one of its articles to falsely claim that Obama had been present at Chicago’s Trinity United Church during Reverend Wright’s denunciation of America’s “white arrogance.” (Obama was actually in Miami during Wright’s sermon.) [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] Corsi uses a man he calls one of Obama’s “closest” childhood friends, Indonesian Zulfan Adi, to back his assertion that Obama was once a practicing Muslim. However, Corsi does not report that Adi later retracted his claims about Obama’s religious practices, and admitted to knowing Obama for only a few months. Corsi also ignores a Chicago Tribune story that contains interviews with “dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends [who] show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia,” and other media reports that have conclusively proven Obama was never a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008). Ignoring the Obvious - Corsi repeatedly claims that Obama is a master speaker who bedazzles crowds with soaring flights of rhetoric, but never actually gives any specifics of what he intends to do as president. He writes: “At the end of every rhetorically uplifting speech Obama gives about the future of hope, millions of listeners are still left pondering, ‘Now what exactly did he say?’ If the politician is the message, as [campaign manager David] Axelrod and Obama have proclaimed, they can’t forever avoid telling us what precisely that message is.” But FactCheck notes that “Obama’s Web site is packed with details of what he proposes to do if elected. He lays out descriptions of his policy proposals, including tax cuts for most families and increases for those making more than $250,000 per year; a $150 billion, 10-year program to develop alternative energy sources and more efficient vehicles; a proposal to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and another to create a public health insurance plan for those whose employers don’t offer health coverage. Whether or not one agrees with them, Obama has indeed presented detailed plans for dozens of policies. It’s hard to see how anyone writing a book on Obama could fail to acknowledge their existence.” Conspiracy Theorist, 'Bigot,' and Veteran Liar - FactCheck notes: “Corsi is a renowned conspiracy theorist who says that [President] George Bush is attempting to create a North American Union… and that there is evidence that the World Trade Center may have collapsed [after the 9/11 attacks] because it was seeded with explosives. More recently, Corsi claimed that Obama released a fake birth certificate. We’ve debunked that twice now. [M]any of the themes in The Obama Nation are reworked versions of bogus chain e-mail smears.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] In August 2004, Media Matters found that Corsi routinely embraced both extremist opinions and personal invective. Corsi called Islam “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion.” Of Catholicism, he wrote, “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press.” Of Muslims themselves, he wrote, “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters—it all goes together.” And of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), he wrote: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill [former President Clinton] satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?” [Media Matters, 8/6/2004] (Corsi posted these comments on the Free Republic under the moniker “jrlc,” and identified himself as “jrlc” on March 19, 2004.) [Free Republic, 3/18/2004; Jerome Corsi, 8/7/2004] An Obama campaign spokesman calls Corsi “a discredited, fringe bigot.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008] FactCheck concludes, “In Corsi’s case, we judge that both his reputation and his latest book fall short when measured by the standards of good scholarship, or even of mediocre journalism.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] PolitiFact concludes: “A reader might think that because the book is printed by a mainstream publishing house it is well-researched and credible. On the contrary—we find The Obama Nation to be an unreliable document for factual information about Barack Obama.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008]

Sean Hannity. [Source: Halogen Guides (.com)]Conservative radio show host Sean Hannity tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “can’t point to a single instance in which President Bush or [Republican candidate John] McCain or [Bush political adviser] Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race.” Hannity’s claim is proven false by data collected by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. Hannity himself asked his audience on March 2, 2008, “Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?” He has also repeatedly distorted the content of Michelle Obama’s 1985 Princeton University senior thesis to suggest that Mrs. Obama believes, in Hannity’s words, “blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.” (Mrs. Obama was documenting the attitudes of some black Princeton alumni from the 1970s and not expressing her own views.) [Media Matters, 8/7/2008] Media Matters has also documented numerous examples of other radio and TV personalities making “an issue of Obama’s race” (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After). The issue of race will continue with conservative pundits and radio hosts (see August 25, 2008, September 22, 2008, October 7, 2008, October 20, 2008, October 22, 2008, October 28, 2008, and November 18, 2008).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Jerome Corsi, author of a widely discredited book that smears presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), tells a C-SPAN interviewer that if Obama becomes president and people like Corsi dare to criticize him in print, “Obama might just have to create a department of hate crimes and put them in jail.” [Media Matters, 8/16/2008]

Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s most popular conservative radio talk show host, tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was nominated because “nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” As documented by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh, while complaining about “how unqualified Obama is,” says, “I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh continues: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It’s the reverse of it. They’ve, they’ve ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who’s not qualified, who has not earned it.… It’s perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this?” Limbaugh, in a conversation with a caller, prefaces his comment by saying that “liberals” oppose racism except “when it benefits them… [s]o when, when a precious resource like racism becomes scarce… they will go out and drill for new sources.… You’re exactly right. They understand the principle. They want it for themselves, just not anybody else. Liberals can have two sets of rules: One for the elites, the arrogants and the condescending elites, and the other set of rules for everybody else.… They will exempt themselves from the limiting rules they place on everybody else.” He concludes that Obama’s nomination is “perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this? So they do it and then they start behaving in manners and ways that let us know that they know that they’ve goofed up with the choice. Actually, it’s been somewhat fascinating to watch.” [Media Matters, 8/20/2008; Guardian, 8/24/2008; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 8/27/2008] Limbaugh and other radio hosts have repeatedly used Obama’s race as a springboard for numerous false and unsupported allegations (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After).

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh repeatedly tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “believes [in] and favors infanticide. Not just abortion, but infanticide.” Limbaugh also claims that Obama “approves of abortion in the fourth trimester.” [Media Matters, 9/4/2008; Slate, 9/23/2008] (According to an online medical dictionary, there are only three trimesters in a typical pregnancy.) [Medicine (.net), 2008] According to the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Limbaugh supports his claim by misrepresenting Obama’s opposition for a 2001 anti-abortion bill during his tenure as an Illinois state senator. Obama and other opponents said the “born alive” bill was unnecessary because Illinois state law already prohibited the conduct addressed in the bill (the abortion of fetuses in the last trimester before birth) and gave unconstitutional legal rights to unborn fetuses. [92nd General Assembly, 2001; Media Matters, 9/4/2008] Limbaugh calls Obama a supporter of “infanticide” from August 19. On August 20, he claims that “Obama lobbied for infanticide” and adds: “You know, abortion’s one thing; infanticide is quite another, and it is now widely known that Obama was all for infanticide. It’s the only way you can put it.” On August 22, Limbaugh says that Obama “really admires” China’s mandatory one-child policy, and adds: “[M]ost people want a son. And if they are pregnant with a daughter, what do they do? They abort, and they keep aborting until they get a son. Now that’s a policy Obama can support. That’s a policy Obama likes. He’s for infanticide. It is not an overstatement to say so.” On August 26, Limbaugh expands his claim to include the entire Democratic Party: “So, here’s a party trying to present itself as a newly-found faith party—that they understand people’s values—and their nominee believes in infanticide.” On August 28, Limbaugh, after calling Obama a “thug,” says: “What has complicated [Obama’s] mental journey are his political ambitions. His desire to hold high public office has required this confused man to lie about his sometimes bizarre judgments such as supporting infanticide.” On September 2, Limbaugh accuses Obama of “support[ing] the killing of babies born alive as the result of botched abortions.” On September 3, Limbaugh again expands his claim, calling “liberals” “child abusers—partial birth abortion, infanticide…” [Media Matters, 9/4/2008]

Neal Boortz. [Source: Premiere Motivational Speakers Bureau]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Neal Boortz, falsely claiming Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, suggests asking Obama “how many prayer rugs he has.” Boortz is attacking Obama in response to a recent gaffe by Republican contender John McCain, who seemingly could not remember how many homes he owns. After calling McCain, who is 72, “senile… he keeps going to the wrong home, too, at night,” he then adds, “Let’s ask Obama how many prayer rugs he has.” When Cox Radio correspondent Jamie DuPree says: “See? And, you know, somebody would say that’s not fair,” Boortz responds, “Well, I’m not trying to be fair.” [Media Matters, 8/25/2008] Boortz is repeating the debunked assertion that Obama is a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008).

Conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic Party “the minority party,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “a minority, a half minority at least,” and both Obama and the Democratic Party are “against the white person.” According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Savage goes on to say of the Democratic Party, “The membership is made up largely of minority blocs, the Hispanic caucus and the gay caucus—caucuses that are all against the white person.” Savage says that Democrats are “trying to pose as a centrist party, trying to win over the white male voter” and continues: “Now, the white women generally are not as hard-nosed about things as the white male, and so many white women don’t even understand that they’re being duped, and they vote for a Democrat, not knowing that they’re digging their own grave.… But now they’re going after the working-class white male, who is traditionally leery of the Sister Helen Prejeans [an opponent of capital punishment], the gay lobby, the caucuses and the other lobbies that are trying to take away his child’s birthright.” [Media Matters, 8/26/2008]

Jerome Corsi, author of a widely debunked smear against Democratic candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), says in a WorldNetDaily article that since the Obama campaign has responded to his book with a Web page called “Unfit for Publication,” it is conceivable that an Obama presidency will create “a censorship department in which a book critical of a President Obama might be banned from publication.” [WorldNetDaily, 9/7/2008] Corsi has previously suggested that Obama is likely to create a “department of hate crimes” and put critics such as himself in jail (see August 16, 2008).

Walid Shoebat. [Source: TalkGuests (.com)]Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that Walid Shoebat, who claims to be a reformed terrorist and is now a favorite guest of right-wing radio hosts, tells host G. Gordon Liddy that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “definitely a Muslim,” a patent falsehood that has been repeatedly debunked (see January 22-24, 2008). Shoebat also repeats another widely debunked falsehood, that terrorist groups such as Hamas have proclaimed their support for Obama. Shoebat briefly discusses Obama’s supposed “indoctrination” in Indonesian “madrassas” (as a child, Obama was educated in an Indonesian Catholic school for a brief period), then says: “No one is called Hussein unless he is Muslim. So it is very clear that Barack Hussein Obama is definitely a Muslim.” Anyone who leaves the Muslim faith is to be killed, Shoebat claims, so Obama is by definition a Muslim by dint of still being alive. Shoebat also says: “from al-Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas, every single Muslim terrorist organization supports Barack Hussein Obama. So why would Americans want to have a president that is connected to Islam and that is proud to be Muslim?” [Media Matters, 9/11/2008]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “not black.” As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Limbaugh asks the rhetorical question: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?… He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa.… [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.” Media Matters documents this claim being advanced as far back as February 14, when blogger Kenneth Lamb wrote that Obama “is actually Arab-American [and] not legally African-American.” Lamb produced no evidence of his claim, but since then, conservative bloggers and some radio hosts have repeated the claim. In reality, Obama’s father was a African from Kenya, in the black part of Africa, and his mother was a Caucasian American. [Media Matters, 9/22/2008]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, appearing as a guest on Fox News, tells listeners that in a United Nations speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated “talking points” from the stump speeches of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh says that Ahmadinejad “echo[ed] Barack Obama talking points—talking about how America is responsible for all the problems of the world, talking about how American defense spending is—led to the crisis here.” Limbaugh provides no proof of his assertion. Limbaugh says that Democrats “must be pulling their hair out” because Ahmadinejad is “echoing Obama’s talking points.” In his speech to the UN today, Ahmadinejad discussed what he called “Zionist murderers” and to the purported influence of “Zionists” on the “political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US.” [CNN, 9/23/2008; Media Matters, 9/24/2008]

Chris Baker. [Source: The Vigil]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker calls Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama a “little b_tch” for reacting to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama was “palling around” with accused domestic terrorist William Ayers. Baker says: “[T]his little b_tch needs to stand up for himself. Sorry, I can’t stand this. You want to be the president of the United States, and you won’t even stand up to a smoking-hot chick from Alaska? How is he gonna stand up to the world’s terrorists?… I mean, this—this guy—this guy is—he’s a—he’s a wimp is what he is.… This wuss-bag needs to stand up for himself and answer the questions about his relationship with Bill Ayers and other terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.” Baker cites two articles from the Associated Press and New York Times, but fails to note that both articles debunk Palin’s claim that Obama had anything but a peripheral connection to Ayers. And Baker fails to reveal that the Obama campaign had responded two days before to the Palin assertions. [Media Matters, 10/7/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker promotes an Internet video that features a Harlem preacher calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s mother “trash.” Baker discusses the video, by the Reverend James David Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church, on his radio show, and posts the video on his Web site. Baker says of the video: “Oh God, you have to—you have to see this. This guy—I mean, this guy just goes off. And he’s not really wrong, either. That’s the best part, at least, you know—at least, in my hate-filled opinion.” Manning contrasts Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose daughter Bristol is carrying a child out of wedlock. Manning says: “The difference between Obama’s mama and Bristol Palin is that Obama’s mama was trash. I mean, she was dirt. She was a bag of trash sitting on the sidewalk waiting there in Honolulu on one of those streets for the garbage truck to come by and pick her up and take her to the dump.… [M]y mama told me back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the only kind of white women that would take up with a black man back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a trashy white woman. The only kind of white woman that would take up with a black man in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a sloozy, was a floozy, was a lowlife, snail-eating, white woman. That’s the kind of woman that Obama’s mama was.… Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that piece of trash called Obama’s mama. Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that trash that hatched Obama. Yeah.” Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, was a white American, and his father was a black African. [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]

Jerome Corsi leaving Kenya, with members of his entourage and Kenyan escorts. [Source: Los Angeles Times]Jerome Corsi, the author of a bestselling book that smears US presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), is detained in Kenya after engaging in a book tour in Nairobi, the nation’s capital. Authorities say Corsi is attempting to promote his book without a work permit, a breach of Kenyan law. [London Times, 10/8/2008] “His papers were not in order,” says Immigration Ministry spokesman Elias Njeru. “He came in with a tourist visa but had to do business. So his papers were on the wrong side of the law.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/8/2008] Corsi also intended to present a check for $1,000 to George Obama, a half-brother of the candidate who was found living in poverty in a Nairobi slum a few weeks ago. The London Times calls the attempted donation “a stunt to suggest that [Obama] was not taking care of his Kenyan-based relative.” One Kenyan governmental source suggests that Corsi is being held in part for rumors he has spread that Obama is partly responsible for the wave of violence that engulfed the country after the 2007 presidential elections; The Times writes that few in Kenya take Corsi’s allegations seriously. According to promotional literature Corsi and his associates intended to distribute, “Dr. Corsi will also expose details of deep secret ties between US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectoral groups in Kenya and subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Senator Obama win the American presidency.” Obama, whose father is Kenyan, is “hugely popular across Africa,” The Times reports, and many Africans wonder “why American right-wingers would wish him ill.” [London Times, 10/8/2008]Attempts to Blame Obama for Detention - Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that while in Kenyan detention, Corsi calls in on an American conservative radio talk show, Quinn & Rose, and, after claiming he was in detention because the Kenyans lost his travel papers, suggests that Obama had somethng to do with his detention. “Call Barack’s office and—call Barack’s office and ask him why I’m being detained,” Corsi says. “Tell you what: I think it’s pretty dangerous—it’s pretty dangerous to write a critical book of Barack Obama. I wouldn’t advise anybody do it.” (Corsi has repeatedly suggested that the Obama campaign had tried to censor him—see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008.) [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]Leaves Kenya without Incident - Hours later, Corsi later leaves Kenya; it is not clear whether his departure is voluntary. Kenyan police say Corsi leaves of his own volition, but a Corsi spokesman accuses the Kenyan authorities of treating Corsi “like a criminal.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/8/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, conservative radio hosts echo the claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate proving his American citizenship, a claim long since debunked (Obama long ago posted a copy on his Web site—see June 13, 2008—and document experts and the Hawaii Department of Health will confirm its validity—see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Rick Roberts tells his audience that Obama’s birth certificate “hasn’t… been produced” and that no one in the Obama campaign has ever provided one for public scrutiny. Chris Baker says there “has never been a real birth certificate presented” by Obama. Michael Savage, taking the story one step further, says that the birth certificate “that was produced is a forgery.” Savage also claims that no one in Hawaii, Obama’s birth state, can find the original certificate: It “does not exist, they can’t find it in the Hawaii government. It’s never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery.… I will never work for a man who has a birth certificate nobody can find. In other words, if you vote for Obama, you’re insane.” Savage goes on to claim that Obama is actually a Kenyan citizen, like his father, another claim long since disproven (see August 1, 2008 and After), and makes an equally illegitimate claim that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa, or radical Islamist school (see January 22-24, 2008), under the name “Barry Soetoro”; Savage even claims that Obama legally changed his name to “Barry Mohammed Soetoro” in Indonesia. No such name change has ever been documented. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008] Weeks later, Savage will assert, without proof, that Obama will visit Hawaii to address the issue of the birth certificate and cloak the trip by ostensibly visiting his gravely ill grandmother (see November 10, 2008).

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that Jerome Corsi, author of a book widely debunked as an attempt to defame presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After) and after leaving Kenya where he had been briefly detained by authorities for peddling his book without a work permit (see October 8, 2008), tells conservative radio host Lee Rodgers that he is a victim of journalistic suppression. “I think the story here is really the suppression of the press,” he says. “I hate to think of what the First Amendment is going to mean. If you write a negative book or criticize Obama, I think you’re now going to have to risk being thrown in jail or killed.” Rodgers agrees, “Yeah, well, that’s the mentality of these people.” Corsi also claims that he has been targeted by the Obama campaign: “I’m telling you, this is scary. I have heard from Obama supporters telling me: one way or another, boy, when we’re in office, we’re going to shut you down.” Corsi has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of censorship by the Obama campaign (see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008). Corsi also tells Rodgers that he has “[d]isproved every point” that the Obama campaign made in a “40-page rebuttal” to his book. In reality, Corsi responded to the Obama campaign’s rebuttal by issuing a list of 11 corrections for the next printing, most of which corrected lies identified by the Obama campaign or outside sources. [Media Matters, 10/10/2008]

Bill Cunningham. [Source: WBAP 820 AM]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, host of a popular Cincinnati call-in show, implies that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the “Antichrist” and tells his audience that Obama’s popularity may be a sign of the Apocalypse. Cunningham, noting that reports show Democrats have registered 666,000 new voters in Ohio, says: “And around Ohio, the number [of newly registered voters] is 666,000. Six-six-six. The mark of the beast. The great majority, of course, are registered by ACORN. The mark of the beast. And who is the beast? Who gave ACORN $800,000 as part of this criminal conspiracy? Who was the lawyer for ACORN? Who conducted ACORN seminars to tell ACORN employees and others how to cheat the system? Barack Hussein Obama. I may declare him to be the beast. Six-six-six. It could be the end of all days.” Cunningham also claims that radical Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, who he erroneously characterizes as Obama’s “buddy,” calls Obama “the messiah… the son of God.” 666 is the Biblical number of “The Beast,” or the Antichrist, whose coming heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of days. ACORN is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a community activist organization that works to register poor voters. Obama once represented ACORN in a lawsuit. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008]

Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn. [Source: OrbitCast]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Rose Tennent, on her nationally syndicated talk show Quinn & Rose, says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “because he doesn’t want to be known as an Uncle Tom anymore. He wants to be black again.” Co-host Jim Quinn says of Powell: “He’s tired of being called an Oreo.… [R]emember, when he was in the Bush administration, he was a white guy.” Tennent responds: “Blacks hated him. They—‘Oh, he doesn’t count. It doesn’t count that you have someone black in the administration. He’s not really black, he’s an Uncle Tom.’” Tennent says that Powell’s endorsement of Obama “is racism.” [Media Matters, 10/20/2008]

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that conservative radio host Jim Quinn, of the syndicated show Quinn & Rose, says that the US should go back to a time where only landowners could vote. Quinn says: “Originally, if you didn’t own land, you didn’t vote, and there was a good reason for it: because those without property will always vote away the property of other people unto themselves, and that’s the beginning of the end.… Now—I mean, I can hear the appeal to the masses: ‘It’s not fair, it’s not the American way that you don’t get to vote,’ but let me ask you a question: If I don’t own anything, what kind of a problem do I have with voting for a measure—a tax, a law—that takes somebody else’s property and gives it to me? I have no stake in personal property ownership ‘cause I don’t have any. Now, back in the day, when this was the law of the land, anybody who wanted to vote needed to step up to the plate, achieve, get a stake in America, and then vote.” Quinn equates non-landowners’ right to vote with what he calls “organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses.” [Media Matters, 10/21/2008] A day later, radio host Michael Savage says that public assistance recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008).

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism releases a study that finds that, by and large, the media coverage for Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been more negative than that for his opponent, Democrat Barack Obama. The Center writes: “Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so. But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time.” The study also finds: “Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments. In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted.” The study also notes that coverage for McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, “had an up and down trajectory, moving from quite positive, to very negative, to more mixed. What drove that tone toward a more unfavorable light was probing her public record and her encounters with the press. Little of her trouble came from coverage of her personal traits or family issues. In the end, she also received less than half the coverage of either presidential nominee, though about triple that of her vice presidential counterpart, Joe Biden. The findings suggest that, in the end, Palin’s portrayal in the press was not the major factor hurting McCain. Her coverage, while tilting negative, was far more positive than her running mate’s.” [Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism, 10/22/2008] The progressive media watchdog site Media Matters will call the study “arguabl[y] flaw[ed]” and will note that it does not include conservative talk radio, whose coverage of the presidential campaign has amounted to what the site calls “an all-out effort to foment hate and suspicion of Obama among their listeners, promoting the most baseless and farfetched of smears and advancing falsehoods—including about Obama’s religion and background—that have taken hold among a substantial percentage of the electorate” (see July 9, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, and November 10, 2008). [Media Matters, 11/6/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that Americans who receive public assistance should not be able to vote. “Do you think a person on welfare has the right to vote?” he asks. “I don’t. Why should a person who is on public assistance maintain the right to vote? Tell me why. Where is it written that they should have the right to vote?… I support them, and they should have the same vote I do? That would be like saying an infant has the right to vote or an insane person has the right to vote. Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They’re only gonna vote themselves a raise.” Savage then brings up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: “So if you get a demagogue like Obama coming along, and he says to the welfare recipient, elect me, and I’ll make sure that we have trickle-up poverty, and the rich—so-called, that is anyone who works for a living—will give you more money, more welfare, of course you’re gonna vote for the demagogue Obama. See, if I was in charge, I’d pass a law which says, OK, you can’t support yourself for whatever reason, you’re on welfare, you lose the right to vote.… You get back on the self-sufficiency, you get the right to vote. Then we’ll have a fair election in America. Otherwise, it’s all over. We have a communist nation either now or in the very near future.” [Media Matters, 10/23/2008] A day before, radio host Jim Quinn said that only landowners should be allowed to vote (see October 21, 2008).

Within hours of Pittsburgh resident Ashley Todd’s claim that she was attacked by a black Barack Obama supporter whom, she says, carved a “B” (for “Barack”) into her face during the attack (see October 22, 2008), conservative blogs and political Web sites begin an outpouring of enraged and supportive posts and articles supporting Todd and lambasting the Obama campaign and the “liberal media” which, they say, will do its best to cover up the alleged attack. Todd uses her Twitter account, and her connections as a member of the College Republicans and a McCain campaign volunteer, to spread the word about her alleged attack. The photograph of her and her wounds, taken by her friend Dan Garcia and given to police and the College Republicans, is quickly posted on the popular conservative news and gossip site Drudge Report, which calls the attack a “mutilation.” The Drudge article takes the controversy to a national level. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008]Bloggers Respond - Conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, writing for the popular blog Instapundit, uses the Drudge article for the basis of his own post (repeating the claim that Todd was “mutilated”), and writes, “This is so serious that I predict it will get almost one-tenth as much national coverage as something some guy may have yelled at a Palin rally once.” He repeats a comment from another blog that says, “But, were it a black woman with an ‘M’ carved in her cheek [presumably for ‘McCain’], we’d be getting 24/7 coverage.” [Glenn Reynolds, 10/23/2008] Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey, writing for another popular blog, Hot Air, calls the attack a “maiming,” though he does not blame the Obama campaign for it, instead writing that “this particular criminal sounds like he’s a couple of bricks short of a load even for that crowd.” Morrissey initially resists the idea that Todd may be perpetuating a hoax, writing, “Not too many young women would scar their faces just to create a political hoax,” but later admits that Todd lied and calls her a “very, very disturbed young woman.” [Ed Morrissey, 10/23/2008] A blogger for College Politico calls the attack “horrifying” and derides bloggers at the liberal Daily Kos for being “unsympathetic,” citing comments that expressed doubts about Todd’s veracity, calling them “deprived” (apparently intending to call them “depraved”) and saying that the Kos bloggers “have absolutely no reason to doubt her.” He goes on to criticize conservative bloggers who also express their doubts about Todd’s story, calls some of the skepticism “idiotic,” and says the fact that the “B” is carved backwards “MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING” (caps in the original). The blogger later posts updates acknowledging that the story is a hoax, and calls Todd “the lowest level of scum.” [College Politico, 10/24/2008; College Politico, 10/24/2008] A blogger calling himself “Patrick” for the conservative Political Byline posts the picture of Todd and writes, “So, this is what they do to people who support McCain.” In his title, he says Todd’s attacker is “One of Barry’s fans, I’m sure,” referring to Senator Obama, and calls Obama the “Marxist Magic Negro.” Like the others, he eventually acknowledges that the story is a hoax. [Political Byline, 10/24/2008]Malkin Expresses Doubts - One conservative blogger who does not immediately leap on the Todd story is Michelle Malkin. When the story breaks, she writes of her suspicions about the “B” being carved so neatly into Todd’s face, and carved backwards, and how she finds Todd’s initial refusal to accept medical treatment questionable. Before Todd admits to the fraud, Malkin writes: “We have enough low-lifes and thugs in the world running loose and causing campaign chaos and fomenting hatred without having to make them up. I’ve been blowing the whistle on the real, left-wing rage not on the front page and in-your-face tactics throughout the election season. Hate crimes hoaxes—by anyone, of any political persuasion, and of any color—diminish us all.” [Michelle Malkin, 10/23/2008]Presidential Campaigns Respond - The McCain campaign issues a statement denouncing the attack as “sick and disgusting”; the Obama campaign issues a statement deploring the attack and demanding that Todd’s assailant be quickly brought to justice. Both McCain and his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), telephone Todd with expressions of concern and support. The Pennsylvania communications director for the McCain campaign, Peter Feldman, quickly spreads the story, along with the photo of Todd, to reporters around the state, along with what reporter Greg Sargent will call “an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established.” Apparently Feldman is the person who first tells reporters that the “B” stands for “Barack.” [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008]Obama Campaign Demands Explanation, Corrections - Todd soon admits that she lied about the attack, and though she claims her memory does not well serve her, says she probably scratched the “B” into her cheek herself (see October 24, 2008). When the national press learns that Todd lied about her attack, the Obama campaign becomes incensed, demanding that the McCain campaign explain why it was pushing a version of the story that was, in Sargent’s words, “far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.” The Obama campaign also pressures some news outlets, including KDKA-TV and WPXI-TV, to rewrite their reports to remove the inflammatory and “racially charged” information concocted by Feldman, including claims that the alleged attacker told Todd he would “teach [her] a lesson” about supporting McCain, and that the “B” stood for “Barack.” There is no evidence of the national McCain campaign becoming involved in promulgating the falsified Todd story. [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008]'Okay Obama Frame-Job. ... I'd Give You a 'B' - After the story is exposed as a fraud, many post irate or sarcastic rejoinders on Twitter, using the hash tag ”#litf08” to ensure their viewing on the College Republican Twitter account, “Life in the Field,” where Todd made many of her Twitter posts. A former blogger for the Senate campaign of Christopher Dodd (D-PA), Matt Browner-Hamlin, asks: “Anyone know which Rove protege is responsible for #litf08? Because they lack the execution skills of the man himself.” Browner-Hamlin is referring to former Bush administration campaign manager Karl Rove. Another commenter writes: “Hmm, it was an okay Obama frame-job, just a few inconsistencies snagged you. Overall I’d give you a ‘B.’” And another commenter asks, “Do 50 College Republicans [the description of the ‘Life in the Field’ volunteers] try this kind of stunt often?” College Republicans executive director Ethan Eilon claims his organization “had no idea” Todd “was making this story up.” [Wired News, 10/24/2008]Pittsburgh Councilman Demands Apology from McCain Campaign - The Reverend Ricky Burgess, a Pittsburgh City Council member, will demand an apology from the McCain campaign for deliberately spreading a story it had not confirmed, and for embellishing it to make it even more racially inflammatory. “That one of your campaign spokespersons would spread such an incendiary story before any confirmation of the facts is both irresponsible and runs counter to our nation’s constitutional guarantee that no one be denied life, liberty, or property without due process,” Burgess writes. He demands an apology for “inflaming the divisions of this country,” and later says: “I don’t know why they chose to push this story. But it just seems suspicious to me that they would target this story, which has a fictional African-American person harming a non-African-American person in this city.” A McCain campaign spokesman initially derides Burgess and his source, the progressive news blog TPM Election Central, writing: “The liberal blog post that the councilman cites has no basis in fact. The McCain campaign had no role in this incident. We hope the young woman involved in the incident gets the help that she needs. It’s disappointing that Pittsburgh law enforcement time and resources were wasted by her false allegations.” [WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ]

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, who hosts a popular Cincinnati call-in show, accuses Democratic candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) of wanting to “gas the Jews.” In what is apparently intended to be a comedic skit, Cunningham tells a co-host: “This Obama guy loves the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]. Can’t you figure that out?… Obama wants to gas the Jews, like the PLO wants to gas the Jews, like the Nazis gassed the Jews.” Co-host Scott Sloan, playing a fictional Jewish character called “Randy Furman,” tells Cunningham that he is making the accusation because “you just don’t like one-half-percent black people, that’s your problem.” [Media Matters, 10/25/2008] Two weeks before, Cunningham told listeners that Obama may be the Antichrist (see October 10, 2008).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, many different conservative radio hosts repeat a falsehood about presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) that originates on the Drudge Report. According to the original report, Obama told a radio audience in 2001 that he regretted the US Supreme Court did not pursue “wealth redistribution,” a concept some associate with socialism. Obama did not make such a statement; instead he said during that interview that it was a tragedy the civil rights movement “became so court-focused” in trying to bring about political and social equality. Minneapolis radio host Chris Baker misquotes Obama by claiming that he said “we gotta have economic justice and the Supreme Court ought to weigh in on redistributing wealth.” Baker adds: “Yeah, it’s too bad you kind of stuck with the Constitution as it was. It’s a tragedy that redistribution of wealth was not pursued by the Supreme Court. Can you believe that?” Baker also claims that Obama “wants to use the Supreme Court to reinterpret the Constitution in order to force the redistribution of wealth.” Baker is not the only radio host to repeat the falsehood. Sean Hannity tells his radio audience, referring to the 2001 interview, “Obama actually believes the Constitution is defective because it doesn’t allow judges to redistribute wealth.” He adds: “if he becomes president, [Obama] wants the Supreme Court and other federal courts to literally have the power to spread the wealth around and redistribute the wealth. Those are his words, his voice.” He goes on to say flatly, “Obama is a socialist.” Mark Levin tells his listeners, “what the [Supreme] Court should have done from Obama’s point of view was impose socialism from the bench.” Levin levels another false accusation against Obama: that he wants to reinterpret the 14th Amendment “to compel as a matter of constitutional law, the socialist agenda. In other words, constitutionalize redistribution of wealth.” Radio hosts Michael Savage, Jim Quinn, Brian Sussman, and others reiterate the claims, with Quinn telling listeners: “He just got done telling you that the Constitution’s only half-done. He needs to write the other half—you know, the other half where we decide how much we take from you and give to that guy down the street.” Like many of his colleagues, Sussman plays an edited clip of Obama’s 2001 statement to bolster his claims. [Media Matters, 10/28/2008; Media Matters, 11/6/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh distorts and misstates comments by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from 2001, asking listeners how Obama can be sworn in as president if he “flatly rejected” the Constitution. Limbaugh tells his listeners that Obama “calls himself a constitutional professor or a constitutional scholar. In truth, Barack Obama was an anti-constitutional professor. He studied the Constitution, and he flatly rejected it. He doesn’t like the Constitution, he thinks it is flawed, and now I understand why he was so reluctant to wear the American flag lapel pin. Why would he?… I don’t see how he can take the oath of office” because “[h]e has rejected the Constitution.” Obama said during a September 6, 2001 panel discussion on Chicago’s WBEZ radio that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” Obama’s criticism was directed at the Founding Fathers’ handling of the issue of slavery in the Constitution. Later in the discussion, Obama said that the Constitution is “a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now.” Limbaugh plays carefully edited clips from the WBEZ program but does not play the larger portion of Obama’s remarks that give a fuller picture of his meaning. Instead, he falsely accuses Obama of saying that the Constitution cannot “be fixed,” and asks: “How is he going to… how is he gonna place his hand on the Bible and swear that he, Barack Hussein Obama, will uphold the Constitution that he feels reflects the nation’s fundamental flaw. Fundamental. When he talks about a fundamental flaw, he’s not talking about a flaw that can be fixed. Fundamental means that this document is, from the get-go, wrong.” Media Matters notes that “several influential Republicans,” including President Bush, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Chief Justice John Roberts, “have articulated a similar view” to Obama’s. [Media Matters, 10/28/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, discussing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s parentage, says of Obama’s father: “[I]magine at the age of one or two seeing your father for the last time. See, his father was a typical black father who, right after the birth, left the baby. That’s what black fathers do. They simply leave.” Cunningham then calls Obama’s mother “a Communist” who married “a radical Muslim,” who he refers to as “Barry Soetoro,” and then “rejected” her son at age 10, resulting in Obama’s being sent to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. [Media Matters, 10/30/2008] However, the name of Obama’s stepfather is Lolo Soetoro, not Barry Soetoro. In addition, he is said not to have been a devout Muslim. For example, according to the New York Times, he was “a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.” [New York Times, 4/30/2007]

Cover illustration of the ‘Hype’ DVD. [Source: Amazon (.com)]The conservative lobbying group Citizens United (CU) distributes hundreds of thousands of DVDs in newspapers throughout Ohio, Florida, and Nevada, all considered “swing states” in the upcoming presidential election. The DVDs contain a “documentary” entitled Hype: The Obama Effect and are characterized by CU as “truthful attack[s]” on Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). Previous advertisements for the film said the film portrays Obama as an “overhyped media darling,” and quoted conservative pundit Tucker Carlson as saying: “The press loves Obama. I mean not just love, but sort of like an early teenage crush.” The DVD distribution takes place just days before the November 4 election. CU says it is spending over a million dollars to distribute around 1.25 million DVDs, which are included with delivery and store-bought copies of five newspapers: the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Palm Beach (Florida) Post, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The film attacks Obama’s record on abortion rights, foreign policy, and what the Associated Press calls his “past relationships” with, among others, his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright (see January 6-11, 2008). The DVD also attempts to tie Obama to political corruption in Illinois, and lambasts the news media for what CU calls its preferential treatment of Obama. CU president David Bossie says: “We think it’s a truthful attack. People can take it any way they want.” Bossie was fired from his position on a Republican House member’s staff in 1998 for releasing fraudulently edited transcripts of a former Clinton administration official to falsely imply that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton had committed crimes (see May 1998). Among those interviewed about Obama for the film are conservative columnist Robert Novak, conservative pundit Dick Morris, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), and author and pundit Jerome Corsi, whom the AP terms a “discredited critic” of Obama. Obama campaign spokesman Isaac Baker calls the DVD “slash and burn politics,” and says the DVD is another tactic of the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ) to “smear” Obama with “dishonest, debunked attacks from the fringes of the far right.” [New York Times, 7/22/2008; Associated Press, 10/28/2008; Media Matters, 10/29/2008]Newspaper Official Defends Decision to Include DVD - Palm Beach Post general manager Charles Gerardi says of his paper’s decision to include the DVD in its Friday distribution: “Citizens United has every right to place this message as a paid advertisement, and our readers have every right to see it, even if they don’t agree with it. That we accepted it as a paid advertisement in no way implies that this newspaper agrees or disagrees with its message.” [Palm Beach Post, 10/31/2008]Falsehoods, Misrepresentations, and Lies - Within days, the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters finds that the DVD is riddled with errors, misrepresentations, and lies. Claim that Obama 'Threw' Illinois State Senate Election - On the DVD, author David Freddoso claims that in 1998, Obama managed to “thr[o]w all of his opponents off the ballot” to win an election to the Illinois State Senate, a claim that has been disproved. Claim that Obama Refuses to Work with Republicans - Freddoso also asserts that there are no instances of Obama’s stints in the Illinois State Senate nor the US Senate where he was willing to work with Republicans on legislation, an assertion that Freddoso himself inadvertently disproves by citing several instances of legislation Obama joined with Republicans to pass. Claim that Obama Wants to Raise Taxes on Middle Class and Small Business - The DVD’s narrator misrepresents Obama’s campaign statements to falsely claim that Obama has promised to “irrevocabl[y]” raise taxes on citizens making over $100,000 to fund Social Security; the reality is that Obama’s proposed tax increase would affect citizens making $250,000 or more. The DVD narrator makes similarly false claims about Obama’s stance on raising the capital gains tax, and on raising taxes on small business owners. Conservative radio host Armstrong Williams tells viewers that Obama will raise taxes on small businesses that employ only a few workers, when in fact Obama has repeatedly proposed cutting taxes on most small businesses. Huckabee makes similar claims later in the DVD. Claim that Obama Supports Immigration 'Amnesty' - The narrator misrepresents Obama’s stance on immigration reform as “amnesty for the 12 to 20 million people who violated US immigration law,” a position that Obama’s “Plan for Immigration” rejects. Claim that Obama Wants 'Centralized Government' Health Care - Blackwell, now a contributing editor for the conservative publication TownHall, falsely claims that Obama wants to implement what he calls “a centralized government program that hasn’t worked in Canada, hasn’t worked in England, that has actually taken the freedom from the consumer and limited the choices.” Organizations such as PolitiFact and the New York Times have called claims that Obama supports government-run “single payer” health care false. Claim that Obama Refused to Protect Lives of Infants - Conservative columnist and anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek claims that Obama opposed legislation that would have protected the lives of babies “born alive” during botched abortion efforts, when in fact no such legislation was ever proposed—the law already protects babies in such circumstances—and the Illinois Department of Public Health has said no such case exists in its records. (Stanek has claimed that she has witnessed such incidents during her time as an Illinois hospital worker.) Stanek has said that she believes domestic violence against women who have had abortions is acceptable, claimed that Chinese people eat aborted fetuses as “much sought after delicacies,” and claimed that Obama “supports infanticide.” Claim that Obama Supported Attack on Petraeus - The DVD narrator claims that as a US senator, Obama refused to vote for a bill that condemned an attack by liberal grassroots activist organization MoveOn.org on General David Petraeus. In reality, Obama did vote to support an amendment that condemned the MoveOn advertisement. Claim that Obama Supported Award for Farrakhan - The DVD narrator claims that Obama has aligned himself with the controversial head of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and cites the 2007 decision by Obama’s then-church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, to award a lifetime achievement award to Farrakhan. In reality, Obama denounced Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, and stated that he did not agree with the Trinity decision to give Farrakhan the award. Claim of Suspiciously Preferential Loan Rate - The DVD narrator claims that Obama received a suspiciously “preferential rate on his super-jumbo loan for the purchase” of a “mansion” in Hyde Park, Illinois, from Northern Trust, an Illinois bank. A Washington Post reporter did make such a claim in a report, but subsequent investigation by Politico and the Columbia Journalism Review showed that the rate Obama received on the loan was consistent with other loans Northern Trust made at the time and not significantly below the average loan rate. 'Citizen of the World' - Corsi claims that Obama does not consider himself an American, but a “citizen of the world.” Media Matters has found numerous instances where Obama proclaims himself a proud American as well as “a fellow citizen of the world.” In 1982, Media Matters notes, then-President Reagan addressed the United Nations General Assembly by saying, “I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world.” Media Matters notes that Corsi’s anti-Obama book Obama Nation was widely and thoroughly debunked (see August 1, 2008 and After), and since its publication, Corsi has made a number of inflammatory and false accusations about Obama and his family (see August 15, 2008, August 16, 2008, September 7, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, July 21, 2009, and September 21, 2010). [Media Matters, 10/30/2008]

The US’s two most popular conservative radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, are repeatedly labeling the current economic collapse the “Obama recession,” even though the recession has started already, and President-elect Barack Obama was only elected on November 4 and will not assume the presidency until January 20, 2009. Blaming Obama for Wall Street Plunge - According to reports by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Hannity’s guest Dick Morris, a conservative political operative, tells a Fox News audience on November 6 that the stock market plunge is directly attributable to Obama’s election and his intention to “raise the capital gains tax.” Hannity calls the stock market plunge “the Obama tanking.” On the same day, Limbaugh says on his show: “We have the largest market plunge after an election in history. Thank you, man-child Barack Obama.” [Media Matters, 11/7/2008] Hannity says on November 11 that Obama’s election is directly responsible for plunging stock market performances, telling his listeners: “Wall Street keeps sinking. Could it be the Obama recession: The fear that taxes are gonna go up, forcing people to pull out of the market?” On November 12, Limbaugh echoes Hannity’s characterization, telling his listeners that, as reported by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “the recession isn’t President Bush’s fault. It’s the fault, catch this, of the president who hasn’t yet taken office. It’s an ‘Obama recession’; that’s what he’s calling it.” Matthews, clearly impatient with Limbaugh’s characterization, calls the host’s statement an example of “the bitter sore loser’s rhetoric we are hearing from the right these days.” [Media Matters, 11/12/2008]Experts Credit Obama with Wall Street Stabilization - Experts refute Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s attribution of the nation’s economic calamity to Obama, with the Wall Street Journal giving Obama credit for a post-election upturn in the stock market and blaming “lame economic data” and the continuing “drumbeat of bailouts, potential bailouts, and worries about other bailouts” for the stock market’s poor performance. [Wall Street Journal, 11/12/2008] Fox News business commentator Eric Bolling credits Obama’s election with stabilizing the stock market until a dismal national employment report caused the market to drop again. And Fox Business Channel’s vice president, Alexis Glick, tells her audience on November 7: “I so did not believe that the market reaction over the past two days was about Obama. Wednesday morning we walked in, we saw the Challenger and Gray [planned layoff] numbers, we saw the ADP numbers, the weekly jobless claim numbers—yeah, well, they were basically in line, but we knew two days ago that this was going to be a bloody number. Frankly, we probably knew several months ago that it was going to be a bloody number.” The Wall Street Journal and New York Times both agree with Glick’s assessment. [Media Matters, 11/7/2008; New York Times, 11/7/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that President-elect Barack Obama’s grandmother “suspiciously died virtually the night before the election,” in an apparent attempt to question Obama’s pre-election trip to Hawaii. Obama visited his grandmother in late October, shortly before her death on November 3. Savage ties in his questions about Obama’s grandmother and her “suspicious death” to discredited claims that Obama has been unable to verify his US citizenship. Savage tells his listeners: “Well, we don’t even know where Obama was born. His grandmother died the night before the election. There’s a lot of questions around this character that the media won’t answer. Let’s start with what country he’s from. Why was the birth certificate never produced? Why in the world did he take time off from the campaign to visit the grandmother who then suddenly and suspiciously died virtually the night before the election? Tell me about that.” Savage and other conservative commentators have suggested that Obama went to Hawaii, not to visit his gravely ill grandmother, but to address charges that his birth certificate is not valid. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008] Savage is one of a number of conservative radio hosts to spread false rumors about Obama’s birth certificate (see October 8-10, 2008). Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate months before (see June 13, 2008). A number of organizations have verified that Obama’s birth certificate is valid and authentic (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), as have Hawaii Health Department officials (see October 30, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/23/2008; FactCheck (.org), 11/1/2008] According to Talkers Magazine, Savage is third in talk-radio listenership across the US, behind fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008]

Michael Steele. [Source: Washington Times]Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee and one of the few African-American Republicans in public office, says after the 2008 election losses suffered by his party he intends to “rebrand” the Republican Party in a more “hip-hop,” “off the hook” manner to attract minority and younger voters. The party’s principles and stances will not change, he says, but they will be marketed to appeal to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” Steele says he will “surprise everyone” with his new public relations initiative, and with his use of 21st-century technology, particularly Internet-based public outreach methods such as Twitter and Facebook. To those who say he is not up for the job, Steele retorts, “Stuff it.” He worries that the Republican Party has become too regionalized. “There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he says, citing election defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region—young, Hispanic, black, a cross section.… We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.… [W]e need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.… Where we have fallen down in delivering a message is in having something to say, particularly to young people and moms of all shapes—soccer moms, hockey moms.” However, he says, “[w]e don’t offer one image for 18-year-olds and another for soccer moms but one that shows who we are for the 21st century.” [Washington Times, 2/19/2009] Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, lost a race for the US Senate in 2006, where many observers noted that he never mentioned his party affiliation in any of his advertisements. [FactCheck (.org), 10/4/2006]

Gregg Jarrett, guest host of Fox News’s “straight news” broadcast The Live Desk (see October 13, 2009), tells viewers that the Obama Justice Department “thinks it’s okay to intimidate white people, not okay to intimidate black people at the polls.” Jarrett and others are discussing the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss a case against the New Black Panthers, who had been accused of intimidating white voters during the November 2008 elections. Jarrett interviews Washington Times editor John Solomon, whose paper implied, without proof, that the decision to drop the case may have come from “senior elected or politically appointed” White House officials and not from career prosecutors who felt the case lacked merit, as the Justice Department says. Solomon says that during the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats “very strongly raised questions about the politicization of the Justice Department—political people, or career people answering to political people, overruling the front lines of the Justice Department, and this fits that debate right now in the Justice Department. And I think Congress, the Republicans and some Democrats, are asking questions now about whether career people got their say here and whether they were really listened to, or whether some other agenda had been carried out.” Jarrett then notes: “Well, the other message may be that this is a Department of Justice who thinks it’s okay to intimidate white people, not okay to intimidate black people at the polls. That could be one conclusion that people may reach here by their decision.” [Media Matters, 7/30/2009]

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